A Razor Wrapped in Silk

17 The beggar’s song

The following day a sluggish grey fog hung deliberately in the air, as if generated by the city to impede his investigation. Virginsky kept his head bowed as he burrowed into it. The moisture took possession of the urban spaces, forcing the human inhabitants off the streets. It brought with it a sense of spreading hopelessness. The squares and broader avenues were desolate because of it.

He began with the hospitals. There were three children’s hospitals in St Petersburg, the Elizaveta, the Nikolai and the recently completed Prince of Oldenburg’s. The Nikolai was the closest to the bureau, with the Elizaveta about one and a half versts further on along the Fontanka, on the opposite side of the river. Midway between those was the Alexander Municipal Hospital, at which he also made enquiries. The Prince of Oldenburg’s Hospital was a long trudge east, on Ligovsky Prospekt in the Liteynaya District, at the far end of Nevsky Prospekt.

None of the hospitals he visited had any record of admitting a boy called Dmitri Krasotkin, or any child of Mitka’s age or description, on or around the estimated date of Mitka’s disappearance.

Virginsky stood on the top step at the entrance to the Prince of Oldenburg’s Hospital, somehow built as a neo-classical palace; its architect had obviously been more intent on asserting his patron’s nobility than serving the function of the building. But the pungent chemical smell that still lingered in Virginsky’s nostrils suggested that its doctors were familiar with the latest developments in surgical cleanliness.

The fog was as impenetrable as a gauze bandage around his eyes.

As so often with Virginsky, his emotions expressed themselves in thoughts of a vaguely political cast. His frustration led him to conclude that the very names of the hospitals served to remind the sick how much they owed to their imperial and aristocratic benefactors; so that the practice of philanthropy was seen to be just another weapon in the armoury of oppression. Medical care was in the gift of the autocrat and his friends. And instead of justified rage, this stirred a craven gratitude.

He had learnt to keep such thoughts to himself. But now, as the cold fog smothered him in its obscurity, he felt emboldened to cry out: ‘Sweep them all away!’ He accompanied the cry with an appropriate sweep of his arm, unseen by anyone but himself. Almost immediately, after only a single pulse of numb silence, the low rumbling throb of male laughter came back at him. Virginsky felt his face flush, even though there was no reason to assume the laughter had been directed at him.

He strained to listen and peered into the soft grey fuzz that filled the air. The laughter gave way to singing, or rather a tuneless baritone drone: ‘Save your soul. Give alms to save your soul. Pity a poor sightless sinner. I’ll pray for your soul if you give me a crust. If you haven’t a crust, I’ll settle for a kopek. If you haven’t a kopek, I’ll settle for a rouble. If you have no rouble, gold will do. Give alms to save your soul.’

At first, the voice was right beside him, as though the singer was chanting the words directly into his ear. But he realised that that was just a trick of the fog. The beggar was ahead of him, below, on the street.

With every step down he had the sense that he was stepping off the edge of a cliff into nothing.

‘I lost my sight in the service of the Tsar. God save the Tsar! God save his soul. I pray for the souls of all who give alms. Heaven awaits those who give alms.’

As Virginsky moved towards the voice, he saw a soft white figure through the drifting mist. As he approached, the details of the man’s appearance became clearer. He was dressed, Virginsky realised with a flash of astonishment, in a white tunic, half of a Guards officer’s dress uniform. The tunic was grubby now; even so, Virginsky saw the rust-coloured stains, now muted by the layers of filth over them. Virginsky looked into the man’s face. It too was filthy, but for all that, it was a surprisingly handsome face, or once had been: the remnants of his looks were being swallowed up by the bloated effects of dissolution. He could have been aged anywhere between forty and sixty. His hair was long and matted. His eyes oscillated wildly in their sockets, searching desperately for a point of focus in their darkness.

‘You there!’ Virginsky held out an arm to catch hold of the man as he ran towards him. He could have sworn the beggar looked straight at him. His eyes were strangely compelling — enough so to give Virginsky pause as he closed in on him. In that moment, the beggar turned on his heels and broke into a run. Virginsky’s hand grasped the mist.

Virginsky gave chase. He kept his eyes fixed on the tunic, which appeared strangely insubstantial. It flickered in and out of focus, subject to the shifting density of the fog. As Virginsky closed the gap between them, the tunic gained solidity, almost within his grasp now. The other man seemed to stumble. Then suddenly the flash of white flew up into the fog-filled air, like a kite snapped up on the wind. For an instant, Virginsky half-believed the beggar had taken wing. He came to a halt and craned his head. Something white plummeted out of the infinite greyness, as if regurgitated. It fell flat onto the pavement, a sprawl of fabric.

Virginsky bent down to retrieve the discarded officer’s tunic.